Like everything else relating to Christ, or Christos, the dogma of the ascension has no doubt its allegorical root in the Sun's apparent exaltation in the heavens, from the vernal equinox to the summer solstice. This miraculous story, as we have seen it in the New Testament, is more replete with inconsistency than even any of the others of that book. The Fathers have attributed the anonymous book called the "Acts" to Luke; but his gospel contradicts the Acts: the latter makes Jesus remain on earth forty days after his crucifixion; whereas Luke makes him ascend into heaven the very same day he arose from the dead. Those who are stated to have been eye-witnesses of the ascension, being present as disciples at the time, viz., Matthew, John, Peter, James, and Jude, have not, in the epistles ascribed to them, left even an allusion to that most wonderful phænomenon. Matthew and John were said to be present—how came they to omit even the slightest notice of this vital root of Christianity? Mark and Luke were not present; yet they alone notice it, in rather a vague and abrupt manner. In short, no person whatever says he saw it. Mark says that Jesus ascended at Jerusalem; Luke says it was at Bethany, places two miles distant from each other. Matthew says the last seen with the disciples was on a mountain in Galilee; Luke, that it was at Bethany, which is at least seventy-five miles from Galilee.
The dogma of the redemption of man by Jesus Christ, appears not to have been thought of by the New Testament fabricators; and is clearly a subsequent invention of the Church of Rome. Paul, In Corinthians xv., gives us abundant assertions about the resurrection of the same body, which is his chief doctrine, but there is not a word about redemption. This dogma, then, is the lucrative forgery of priestcraft, after the councils of Nice and Laodicea had decided by vote that the spurious miscellany called the New Testament should be the new Will of God. The amount of moral evil done by this fable, is enormous beyond all expression. When men are taught that their wicked deeds and vices are to be rubbed off by a device so unjust and iniquitous as the sacrifice of the innocent, to atone for the crimes of the guilty, we cannot wonder at the horrid depravity of society.
Having already shown that Christianism is merely a compound emanating from the Egyptian, Brahmin, and Zoroastrian systems, or a new version of the fables of Prometheus, Christna, Mithras, Adonis, Bacchus,** etc., engrafted with some variations upon the Jewish scriptures; and that the above names, with hundreds of others, are so many personified emblems of the Sun, which, together with the planetary system and the fixed stars (in Bible phrase, "the host of heaven") formed the occult basis of all the religions of Paganism,*** the important question will be asked—has "may penetrate into the signification of all oriental mysteries; but the Vulgar can only see the exterior symbol, or the bark which covers them." Again, he says, "It is allowed by all who have any knowledge of the scriptures, that everything is mentioned enigmatically."
* That man should be redeemed from the sin of eating an
apple, by the murder of an innocent person called Jesus, is
certainly by far the strangest system of religion that ever
was palmed upon the world. Never was there so great an
outrage on common-sense!
** Even the word Divine, pluralised in Dii Vini, deities
of wine, or priests of Bacchus, is taken from heathenism,
and pressed into the service of a very different order of
priests, save that wine-loving has ever been common to both.
*** Origen tells Celsus that the Egyptian philosophers
veiled their knowledge of things in fables and allegories.
"The learned," he adds,
Christianity has no tangible or anthentic historical foundation, to be understood according to the literal sense of the New Testament? If such events or incidents in any way similar to those detailed in the New Testament, had in reality taken place at the times and places stated, they could not possibly have failed to excite the intense attention of the public authorities amongst the Romans, even if denuded of their miraculous accompaniments the infant butchery of Herod would alone have caused this attention. But as no one of all the historians or noted writers, Roman, Jewish, or Greek, who lived in the period of the alleged prodigies, nor those who came upon the public stage immediately after them, though there were upwards of twenty such distinguished authors, who wrote between the years 20 and 140 A.D., have taken the slightest notice of the life or crucifixion of a person called Christ—(the passage in Josephus is universally given up as forgery)—the inadmissible violations of Nature's laws, said to have accompanied that event, as narrated in the Gospels, which contradict each other in almost every important circumstance, we are forced to the conclusion that independently of everything miraculous, the story is totally unsupported by any concurrent testimony;* but when the miracles are taken into consideration in the literal sense, reason and all experience at once decide the whole to be grossly fabulous; and seems to be a circumstantial imitation of the crucifixion of Prometheus, as we have it in the tragedy of Æschylus, which is a dramatic allegory of the sun, and the planetary system.
* Bishop Talleyrand, in a letter which, he is said to have
written to the Pope, after their quarrel, states that after
Christianity had made some noise in the Empire, the entire
absence of all testimony in regard to its pretended origin,
excited the curiosity of the Roman Senate, to know what
really was the foundation of the story; so they "ordered
affidavits to be procured in the very centre of Palestine,
in places fixed by them, which affidavits were sent to Rome,
with the most conclusive evidence of the correctness of the
report. These proved that Mary, who was of the tribe of
Levi, and wife of the carpenter Joseph, who was of the tribe
of Juda, had had an illicit intercourse with a Roman
soldier, named Panther, who served in the 14th legion,
stationed in Egypt, whence he was detached into Palestine.
From this criminal intercourse a child was born, whom they
called Arenias; and who was adopted by Joseph, according to
the Roman practice, though it was contrary to the Jewish
customs. With Joseph he learned the carpenter's trade; but
after the death of his putative father, he abandoned his
home and mother, and became a vagrant. Having met a few
vagrants like himself, they all took the road to Galilee,
where they lived for some time by begging. Having at last
become the leader of a band of freebooters, he was arrested
by the police of Jerusalem, and finally condemned to death
by the general acclamation of the people." By thus
instituting inquiries in the country in which he was born,
the Roman Senate became acquainted with the origin of Mary's
son, which, in regard to paternity, differs from the
apocryphal gospel of the nativity of Mary.
This new version of the old mythology was gradually constructed by priestcraft during the second, third, and fourth centuries, of materials taken from all the oriental polytheisms; and is a similar sort of fraudful quackery upon these allegorical religions, that astrology is upon legitimate astronomy. Thus, (let us repeat the melancholy truth) out of the comparatively harmless astro-fables of antiquity hath sprung a foul collusion of religious and political tyranny, that has been dreadful in its effects; and every successive invention to strengthen this accursed coalition of an aristocracy of nobles and priests, linked together with royalty,* has tended more and more to depress the interests of the laboring population, or wealth producers of Europe, and served to crush them under the most merciless of all despotisms. And as it is utterly hopeless that our English hereditary lawgivers, who are virtually our feudal rulers, and whose interests are entirely exclusive, will ever pass any laws but such as support and perpetuate these interests, it is much to be feared that, as in France before the revolution, nothing but a sanguinary reaction on the part of the people, will reestablish their right to just representation in Parliament, equal laws, and a dissolution of that baneful state-confederacy between our aristocratic rulers and the reigning superstition; the support of which, we are tempted to conclude, is more the object of government than the interests of the common weal.
* In 1822, the clergy of Austria persuaded the monarch of
over forty millions of people to declare, "I want no men of
science; I want only obedient subjects. I want no education
among my subjects, but what is given by the priesthood."
END OF LECTURE THIRD. [ [!-- H2 anchor --] ]